


and how your fields so green whispered tales of gore

by piperreynas



Category: Baahubali (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, F/M, Minor Character Death, semi-graphic depictions of violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-03-23 05:16:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13780506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piperreynas/pseuds/piperreynas
Summary: the kaiju, a category three, codename knifehead, comes through the breach at two a.m. bhalla half-heartedly makes his way through a diatribe about the faults of the ppdc as he pulls on a shirt and trudges behind baahu to their jaeger, glaring.tendo’s waiting for them with a frown. “don’t do anything stupid,” he says, giving their suits a once over before nodding to LOCCENT.“we never do,” baahu says, grinning..or: amarendra baahubali becomes endeared to devasena by way of the impending apocalypse. a pacific rim au.





	and how your fields so green whispered tales of gore

**Author's Note:**

> this was originally intended to be a long oneshot, but in the interest of meeting the deadline for @avani's ccw i've decided to cut it in half. thanks to kaadhu @forestpenguin for dragging me into the pit that is baahubali fic, and to maya @parlegee/@weaslayyy for being such a wonderful beta.
> 
> this film is set in the universe of pacrim, but i feel i've explained the concept enough to where you don't necessarily need to have watched the film to understand what's happening, but here's a glossary just in case:  
> 
> 
> * ppdc: the pan pacific defense corps  
> 
> * kaiju: godzilla-esque monsters that come out of a dimesional rift in the pacific ocean  
> 
> * jaeger: robots, made to kill kaiju  
> 
> * pan-pacific wall: a sea wall, built to defend against kaiju attacks  
> 
>   
> 
> * loccent: local command center

`kaiju (japanese): giant beast`

`jaeger (german): hunter`

. 

.

.

kattappa finds baahubali in alaska. part of baahu is angry that he’s been found so easily and the other is relieved. maybe, he thinks, kattappa will take him to a place where snow won’t get into all of his clothes.

“general,” he greets stiffly, side-eying his colleagues who are already tossing wary glances kattappa’s way.

“ranger,” kattappa says, tilting his head curiously and allowing baahu to lead him outside. after they’re both out of earshot, kattappa remarks, “the wall’s been breached.” 

baahu snorts. “i hadn’t noticed.”

they lapse into a long silence. it hadn’t been this hard before, baahu thinks, to talk. “we need you,” kattappa says finally. (what he’s really saying is _come back_.)

“no, you don’t,” baahu says. his boss has been eyeing him for the last minute and he knows that if he isn’t back inside in the next few seconds he’ll be out of a job. “i should get back.”

kattappa grasps his arm. “the world is ending, baahu.”

a year ago he would have laughed; now he sighs. “the world has been ending for quite some time now, maama.” ( _bhalla screams as he’s ripped from the jaeger; the moonlight throws everything into sharp focus--the wrinkles in the kaiju’s skin, his brother’s wide eyes--_ )

kattappa grasps baahu’s arm as he walks past. “wouldn’t you rather die in a jaeger?” he says, so quietly that baahu has to strain to hear him, and this is what makes baahu stop in his tracks. he doesn’t have the words to talk about how utterly horrible the knifehead mission had been, but the one thing he will always miss about that day (and all the days that came before) is the rush that had come with the drop.

two hours later baahu is staring down at the alaskan sector of the pan-pacific wall from the window of a military chopper because he is nothing if not a masochist. (or maybe that was bhalla.)

.

.

.

_the first memory baahu has is of his mother on the night of his fourth deepavali. the second is of bhalla and the sound of his delighted screams as their shared collection of kaiju action figures fell from the highest shelf in their house, closely followed by the thwack of baahu’s head hitting the floor after the chair he’d been standing on slipped on the tile floors._

_he hears bhalla yell for amma as he blacks out and wakes up two hours later in a hospital bed to find his head on amma’s lap, her fingers carding through his hair. bhalla apologizes, brow furrowed, his words stilted and strange and baahu knows his brother doesn’t quite understand why he’s in trouble, but he’s_ trying _and that’s enough._

_this is the memory he holds on to during the funeral and the cremation after. all baahu hears for weeks is bhalla, screaming._

.

.

.

it’s drizzling when the chopper lands in hong kong, which seems fitting. there’s someone waiting for them on the landing pad, their face hidden behind an umbrella; a secretary maybe? he steps out of the plane carefully, wincing as the rain hits him full on. “welcome to the shatterdome, baahu,” kattappa says, speaking over the chopper blades.

the umbrella lifts to reveal a woman who strides towards them in a way that reminds him a little of amma, before knifehead. she startles when she sees him. his gaze alights on the tattoo on the inside of her wrist, barely visible behind the tablet she’s clutching in one hand. “this is devasena,” kattappa says, his voice warm, “one of our best. she’s leading the mark 3 restoration program.”

“he’s not what i expected,” she say, looking him up and down clinically.

the corner of kattappa’s mouth quirks up as he opens his mouth, but before he can respond baahu says, “better or worse?”

devasena blinks and cocks her head, like a hawk. “i haven’t decided yet,” she says, inclining her head slightly. baahu holds her gaze, eyes watering, until she rolls her eyes, then turns and walks away.

kattappa looks from devasena, resolutely striding into the distance, to baahu staring after her and sighs loudly.

.

.

.

_the kaiju, a category three, codename knifehead, comes through the breach at two a.m. bhalla half-heartedly makes his way through a diatribe about the faults of the ppdc as he pulls on a shirt and trudges behind baahu to their jaeger, glaring._

_tendo’s waiting for them with a frown. “don’t do anything stupid,” he says, giving their suits a once over before nodding to LOCCENT._

_“we never do,” baahu says, grinning. bhalla snorts and steps into the jaeger._ _(_ neural handshake in 5...4... _)_   “you _ready?” baahu breathes over the sound of the jaeger booting up. (_ neural handshake initiated. _)_ _bhalla tosses him a snide look. baahu grins even wider._

. 

. 

. 

the shatterdome is familiar to him in that all jaeger operating sites look the same, but everything else about it is leagues away from the cool precision of the anchorage base. there are people everywhere--the dining hall, in the middle of aisles and hallways, _on_ the jaegers--and it’s so loud he can barely think.

“we have four jaegers on this site,” kattappa says, taking on the robotic cadence of a museum tour guide and nodding at one. “cherno alpha, from russia. piloted by the kaidonovskys. crimson typhoon, piloted by the wu-tan triplets, striker eureka, piloted by the hansens--” the elder hansen inclines his head; his son sneers, “--and the one you’ll be piloting.”

“there should be more,” baahu says.

kattappa shrugs slightly. “the united nations is taking them out of commission,” he says, his voice perfectly level. “these are the only four sivagami was able to get ahold of.”

baahu swallows hard at the mention of his mother, turning to watch as a technician slams into a flatbed piled high with cardboard boxes. amma would hate this, he thinks, imagining her staring them into submission. “amma’s planning something, isn’t she?” he asks.

kattappa pauses. “we’re strapping a nuclear warhead to striker eureka’s back and sending it into the breach. you’re running defense," he says carefully.

baahu frowns. “and amma thinks this will work?” he asks, gazing at cherno alpha, looming over passerby in the distance.

“devasena will show you to your jaeger,” kattappa says. it is only until after he’s left that baahu realizes he hasn’t answered the question. 

. 

. 

. 

devasena leads him to gipsy danger _._ baahu chokes on air. “god,” he says, half-laughing. he hasn’t been this close to a jaeger, _his_ jaeger _,_ in seven years. “it’s her.”

the defiant set of devasena’s shoulders relaxes slightly and she offers him a small smile. “i’m sure you’ll find her to be in working order.”

he looks up at gipsy, all fire and gleaming metal and then back to devasena. “i’m sure i will,” he says.

she turns to gipsy, flushing. “we’ve given her a nuclear core. and a sword,” she says, sounding almost giddy. “i wanted to add a bow but we realized that it would’ve been inefficient.”

baahu feels warmer than he has in years. “screw efficiency,” he says, not really meaning it. devasena presses her lips together, but her eyes crinkle at the corners before her expression clears.

“your compatibility trials begin tomorrow morning, at eight,” devasena says, watching gipsy wistfully. “i’ve handpicked your candidates based on your previous missions with...with your brother.”

“what did you think?”

devasena blinks, surprised. “you play it safe,” she says slowly, “you lack the initiative to deviate from the rulebook and this inhibits your capacity as a pilot. i...don’t think you’re the right man for this mission.”

baahu coughs. “well,” he says, roughly.

she shrugs slightly, as if to say _you asked for it_. “i’ll see you in the morning,” she says, smirking and turning away.

“wait,” he calls. she turns back to him, brows raised. “thank you for taking care of her.” she smiles and walks away.

.

. 

.

“it’s good to have you back, baahu,” kattappa says, sidling up to him at lunch the next day. “ _we_ missed you.”

baahu smiles wryly at his potatoes. “even peddananna?”

kattappa smiles too. “no. not him.” baahu says nothing. “it’s been quiet at the house without you and bhalla bickering constantly.”

“we didn’t bicker constantly,” baahu says, trying for indignance and falling flat.

kattappa hums. “sivagami did not expect to lose both her sons in one day,” he says, sadly. “i hope you’ll talk to her, when you’re ready.”

. 

. 

.

_the fallout of bhalla’s death involves press conferences --lots of them._

_bhalla had been a staple in the papers and the reporters look a little lost without anyone to pester. they wander about aimlessly during kattappa’s speech, and occasionally one of them will chance a glance at baahu before quickly looking away._

_the last press conference, in alaska, is 4 hours long. baahu says nothing until the very end, just stares out into the audience and tries to ignore the empty space where bhalla should be, which is why he nearly doesn’t hear kattappa asking him to say a few words._

_he walks up to the mic slowly and starts woodenly reciting the speech that the PR staff wrote for him until he imagines bhalla, leaning idly against the back wall and wrinkling his nose in disgust, and he’s forced to stop. he starts over. “my brother is irreplaceable,” he says, swallowing around the lump in his throat. “i don’t ever think i’ll be able to work the way i do..._ did _with him, which is why i’ll be resigning from the ppdc._

_ghost-bhalla grins savagely. baahu turns and walks off the podium. it's what he would’ve wanted, he thinks, pushing away the image of their jaeger rusting in an empty hangar._

 

.

 

.

 

.

 

“4-1,” devasena says, brow furrowing slightly as baahu flips another one of her candidates over his shoulder with a soft grunt.

he stands as the next candidate comes at him, blocks his staff with his arm and then uses it to flip him onto the mat too. “4-0.” her lips twitch; her brows furrow further.

baahu frowns too, sidestepping his next opponent and countering. a few seconds later, his staff is two inches away from his opponent’s nose. “4-2,” devasena says, snidely.

baahu huffs and turns toward her as the candidate scampers off the mat. “is something wrong?”

devasena arches her eyebrow. “excuse me?”

“every time i win a fight, you do this...thing,” baahu answers, standing straighter as her eyes narrow. “i thought you picked these candidates yourself. aren’t you satisfied?”

devasena snorts. “it’s not their performance i find lacking,” she says, her voice seeming to fill up all of the space in the room, “it’s yours. you could’ve defeated all of them two moves earlier.” kattappa ducks his head to hide his grin.

baahu blinks, then looks at the twenty or so candidates behind him. “how about we switch this up,” he says, turning back to kattappa. “put her in the ring with me.” devasena turns to kattappa, wide-eyed.

kattappa stops grinning. “no.”

“you know i can pilot,” devasena starts, quietly. kattappa silences her with a look and she looks away, fuming silently. they’ve had this argument before, he realizes.

“what’s the matter?” baahu goads, “your best and brightest can’t cut it in the ring with me?”

kattappa’s jaw clenches. devasena turns to look at him again, expectant this time. he rolls his eyes. “go,” he says, taking devasena’s tablet.

“remember, it’s a _dialogue_ , not a fight,” baahu says, as devasena takes off her boots. “but that doesn’t mean i’ll dial it down.”

she smirks in response, shrugging off her jacket. “then i won’t either.”

“first to four wins,” kattappa calls.

baahu strikes immediately, stopping his bow staff just shy of her forehead before she even lifts hers. “1-0.”

she steps forward, eyes blazing, and knocks his staff out of the way. “1-1,” she says, tapping his forehead lightly.

she pulls her staff to her right side and baahu strikes her left. “2-1. _concentrate_.”

he steps back. she follows, blocking his thrusts with strikes of her own, until he’s backed up at the edge of the mat, her staff a hair’s breadth away from the bridge of his nose. “2-2,” she says, liltingly. “concentrate.”

she sidesteps his next strike and flips him onto the mat with one hand. he rolls and comes back up on one knee to find her staff pointed at his neck and goes stock still. “3-2,” she says, leaning into him before she seems to catch herself and steps back with a quiet huff.

“more control, devasena,” kattappa calls. devasena inhales. baahu stands up feeling a little lightheaded.

she pauses, tilting her head; he advances with a flurry of strikes, then flips her onto the mat and holds his staff to her head before she can stand. “3-3,” he pants.

she narrows her eyes, swiping at his leg. he jumps away as she stands and advances, spinning her staff between her fingers, and then twenty seconds later, he’s being slammed into into the mat. _hard_. “4-3. i win,” devasena breathes, raggedly. all he can see is her looming over him, her hair sticking to the back of her neck, her collarbones glistening with sweat. his skin seems to vibrate where she’s touching it.

“that’s enough,” kattappa says, sharply. devasena lets go of his ankle and he falls to the floor, panting. “i’ve made my decision.”

“so have i,” baahu says, standing as devasena does the same. “she’s my copilot.”

kattappa's expression goes hard. “pick another candidate, baahu," he says, sharply.

devasena scoffs. kattappa gives her a quelling look that she ignores. “why shouldn’t it be me?” she asks, stepping forward and inclining her chin in something he’s come to recognize as stubbornness mixed with poorly masked anger.

kattappa sighs. “what happened to your parents was...traumatic.” devasena’s jaw clenches; baahu can almost see every single muscle in her shoulders tense up. “you cannot carry that level of emotion with you into the drift.”

devasena turns to look at the floor, blinking rapidly, although baahu doesn't know if it's in frustration or anger. he suspects both. “my brother died in front of me,” baahu counters, watching her out of the corner of his eye. “how do you know i’ll still be able to drift?” he hears the other candidates murmuring behind him.

kattappa looks between the two of them, now standing side by side on the mats, and seems to realize that he’s lost. he sighs again. “report to LOCCENT at 0700 tomorrow.”

devasena turns to him after everyone’s left, eyes bright, and mouths _thank you_. he grins and walks away.

. 

.

.

devasena beams the entire time they’re getting suited up. by the time they’re in jaeger, she’s practically glowing. “have anything you want to say?” devasena asks, cheeks flushed.

baahu shrugs. “you’ll be in my head in a few minutes.”

devasena’s grin grows even wider. she nods shortly, then looks at the floor as the flush in her cheeks grows darker.

“you look good,” he blurts anyway, because apparently being around her has destroyed his brain-to-mouth filter. she laughs like she can’t help it. baahu stares at the line of her throat and exhales.

“ready?” kattappa says.

he glances at devasena--his _copilot_ \--and grins. “ready.”

( _neural handshake initiating in 5...4...3_ \--)

his world folds in on itself once, twice, three times over. he sees amma cupping his cheek, bhalla, smiling, smirking, dying, devasena lifting her umbrella on the landing pad, devasena lifting her umbrella, devasena slamming him into the mat, devasena--

\--he’s in an alley, surrounded by half-crumbled buildings and broken street lamps. there’s a girl in front of him, crouching behind a dumpster with her hands over her ears. baahu creeps forward cautiously as the girl turns, wide-eyed, at the sound of a mouse scurrying under a piece of wet cardboard.

it’s devasena he realizes, heart stopping in his chest. a kaiju screams in the background and devasena--god, she’s so small--curls in on herself, whimpering. ( _what happened to your parents was...traumatizing_ \--)

he swallows, mouth dry. “devasena,” he says, as the alley goes eerily quiet. devasena carefully stands and starts walking down the alley slowly, one hand clutching a tiny black shoe. the alley stays silent and devasena relaxes little by little, until the building beside her collapses to the ground with a groan. a cloud of dust flies up into the air. devasena screams, clapping a hand over her mouth and clutching the shoe to her chest.

a kaiju appears at the end of the alley. devasena raises one trembling hand; baahu hears the distant whine of the plasma cannon powering up. “ _devasena_ ,” he says, grabbing her arm. “this isn’t real.

the kaiju steps closer, crushing another building beneath its feet. devasena goes still, her eyes wide as dinner plates. “devasena, please,” baahu says. the plasma cannon gets louder.

the kaiju lifts an arm, then lets out a deafening screech. baahu looks away from devasena to a see the end of a sword sticking out of the kaiju’s stomach. it collapses with a thud, destroying the street of houses next to them. baahu looks back at the alley opening to see a jaeger looming over them, sword drawn, the sun at its back giving it a bizarre halo.

devasena puts her hand down, smiling slightly. baahu exhales in relief, then everything folds in on itself again, images play backwards tinted in blue. he forces his eyes open, panting, and looks to his right to see devasena, hanging from the supports limply.

he curses, unhooking her and falling to the ground clumsily, devasena cradled in his lap. she curls into his chest, sighing, presses her nose to his breastplate innocently, and for a second he sees her as she was--small, but so, so brave.

 _(drift sequence terminated.)_  

.

. 

.

“you can’t ground her,” baahubali says, storming into kattappa’s quarters like they’re his own, and they might as well be--he grew up here.

“i can do anything i please, so long as i’m in command of this base,” kattappa says, leafing through a stack of papers.

baahu scowls in frustration. “we’re drift compatible, and she has the best simulator score i’ve ever seen, what more do you want--”

“devasena is too inexperienced to rein in her memories during combat,” kattappa says, exasperated. “and this mission is too important to be her first.”

“and how do you know it’ll even work?” baahu asks, fingernails scoring half moons into his palm.

kattappa stands. “your mother is no fool, baahu.” he smiles, wryly. “besides, if this doesn’t work, we’ll all be dead within weeks.”

baahu leans against the desk and closes his eyes, only to be hit with an barrage of images--devasena balled up behind the dumpster, devasena curled into his chest in the jaeger. “i know it was you that found her. i saw it in her memories.”

kattappa’s smile falls. “when you were seven, your mother took you to india with your brother.”

“i remember.”

“i found her then. she...her parents were dead and she had no place else to go, so i took her. the base was...not the best place to raise a child, but there were others--chuck hansen for one.” he sighs. “they grew up among the jaegers; maybe they were meant to pilot them.”

kattappa stares at the lacquered wood of his desk. “i had always intended to let her pilot, when she was old enough and then alaska happened. bhalla was...difficult, but he was _ours_. and devasena is mine. i cannot lose her, baahu.”

baahu straightens. “you’re not protecting her now. just holding her back,” he says. once, he would've found a way to say that less abrasively. the reporters had said that his brother's death had taken the softness from him, and maybe that's true, he thinks, slamming the door on his way out. 

.

.

.

he finds devasena in the jaeger bay, staring up at gipsy while a team of technicians fiddles with the nuclear core. it’s the most at ease he’s ever seen her; he imagines her at seventeen, crawling all over jaegers, kattappa chasing after her. “how long has it been?” she asks dreamily, addressing him without looking at him, “since you saw her heart.”

“a while,” he says, without turning to look and choosing instead to watch devasena, who smiles softly up at gipsy. “i’m sorry about earlier,” he starts.

“don’t be,” devasena says. “i’ll get to pilot again. the scientists have been warning kattappa about a double event for weeks.”

they sit in silence for a few more minutes, listening to the buzz of the welding equipment, the whirring of the lifts. “bhalla was still connected when we were taken,” baahu says, apropos of nothing.

she turns to look at him, frowning. “i know,” she says, carefully. he sees her hand inch closer to his. “i felt it.” (what she means is, _you don’t have to talk_.)

baahu shakes his head. “the hardest part about...after was the silence.” devasena says nothing, just keeps watching him with that look on her face. “i kept trying to fill it,” he says, thinking of the wall, the constant drilling and beeping and humming, “but it never worked.”

"do you miss your brother?" she asks, and this time when she turns to look up at his-- _their_ jaeger, she seems different. older.

baahu considers the question, remembers bhalla's smile then remembers the day he found his brother sneaking into a crime den in san francisco. "sometimes. most of the time."

"i tried to miss my parents," devasena says, voice trembling. "but that didn't work either." he hears her sniffle. "i can still remember them sometimes, but i don't know them. because they're dead." she laughs wetly. "and now it's just me. me and kattappa and chuck and all of these _fucking_ robots. and you."

"i’m glad you’re my copilot,” he says softly, taking her hand.

at this devasena smiles and squeezes his fingers. “me too.” the weight that’s been sitting on his chest since his brother died lifts.

.

.

.

baahu wakes up later that night to the sound of alarms. he stumbles out of bed and trudges out of his room a few seconds later, only to run headlong into devasena. “wha’s goin’ on?” he asks.

“double event,” she says, looking at him bemusedly. there are dark circles under her eyes that hadn't been there the day before, and her eyes are redrimmed, but she looks lighter somehow. “you good?” baahu stifles a yawn and mumbles an affirmative. she rolls her eyes fondly and keeps walking. baahu follows, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

“--breach opened at 2300,” tendo’s saying, talking over the sound of his colleagues gesturing emphatically at various machines and maps. “two kaijus, both category four codenames otachi and leatherback, eight miles from the coast.”

“get cherno and eureka ready,” kattappa says grimly, before turning to baahu and devasena, who are still shouldering through the crowd. “you two stay put.” devasena scowls, huffing quietly and turns to glare at the hansens.

chuck bares his teeth at her, then grins when she frowns at him. max, their bulldog, waddles forward to nose at her calf. herc gives her a pat on the shoulder. “be careful,” devasena says, casting a glance at chuck, who’s sauntering out. 

herc looks to baahu. “you too.”

herc comes back with a dislocated shoulder. the kaidanovskys don’t come back at all.

.

.

.

eight hours later, there’s another double event. after realizing that herc can’t pilot, they launch into a heated debate over who should be allowed to go with chuck that stops when kattappa raises a hand. “i’ll go.”

“no,” baahu says immediately, flashing back to an image of kattappa dry-heaving into the bathroom sink, blood dripping from his nose. “you can’t go.”

kattappa smiles in a way that he probably thinks is reassuring. “as marshal of the ppdc, i have an obligation to do whatever is necessary for the survival of our people no matter what the result. i know the jaeger and the bomb well enough to be able to handle it if something goes wrong.”

“you’re going to launch the bomb now?” chuck starts, incredulously.

“we are in the middle of our second double event, mr. hansen. now is the perfect time.”

herc’s brow furrows, but he makes no move to protest. baahu scoffs. “so you’d rather die than find another pilot?”

devasena’s bemused half-smile falls away. “what is he talking about?”

kattappa sighs. “in the early days of the jaeger program, scientists realized that the strain of maintaining a neural connection with the jaegers was too much for one person and built new jaegers that employed a two person. i piloted one of the first mark 2’s with aslam khan. after a few months we realized that there were no radiation shields, but it was too late. he died a few years ago and i’m...not far behind.”

“well,” devasena says, after a long moment. “that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to find another pilot.”

kattappa laughs shortly. “look around you, deva. there’s no time.”

“what about amma?” baahu blurts, desperately. “it’s too soon after bhalla, she won’t be able to handle it.”

kattappa winces at this, and baahu thinks for a second that maybe he’ll step back, get one of the cadets to take his place, but then, “she will have to learn to. everyone suit up.”

the wu-tan triplets file out, heading for their jaeger. devasena inhales sharply and goes still. baahu lifts a hand and lets it hover near her elbow awkwardly; she takes a small step towards him, letting his hand brush the soft skin of her forearm and relaxing ever so slightly. kattappa turns to them. “you two will not be coming.”

“you can’t fight two kaiju by yourself--” devasena protests hotly, at the same time baahu says,

“you’ll _die_ \--” herc says something too but kattappa quiets all three of them with a hand and walks out.

chuck presses a kiss into her hair quickly. “we’ll be fine, princess.”

devasena closes her eyes and heaves a sigh. “see that you are,” herc says, his good hand moving from his hair to his injured hand. chuck’s throat works as he nods once, then follows kattappa out.

.

.

.

they would’ve been fine, had another kaiju not come through bare minutes after their drop. baahu flashes back to the logic problems from school: _if one jaeger can fight one kaiju and win, can it fight two? can two jaegers fight three?_

crimson typhoon is ripped to shreds with the brothers still inside as baahu and devasena suit up with shaking hands. baahu glances over at LOCENT, chock full of people even after evacuation has begun, then to devasena on his right and thinks _we have to win_.

he pulls her off to the side before they get in the jaeger. "i...let me take point on this one?" he says, more question than statement.

she studies him with narrowed eyes. for a moment baahu think she might protest until she sighs, probably thinking back to the failed first drift. "okay," she agrees.

 _neural handshake initiated_ , says the ai coolly. images fold over on each other, play backwards tinted blue then yellow, then green. "devasena," he says, making sure to keep his voice steady. "remember where we are."

she exhales shakily; the barrage of images slows and then baahu forces his eyes open to see LOCCENT. "i did it," she says, laughing.

baahu grins. "ready?" she raises an eyebrow at him, lips twitching. he grins even wider.

.

.

.

striker eureka is missing a limb; they’re too far away to tell which one, but they can see the way the jaeger leans to the left. “patch us through to them,” baahu says.

there’s a few seconds of static and then, “baahu,” kattappa says, voice strained. “you have to turn back, we--”

“how many are left?” devasena asks.

“ _get back_ ,” chuck answers.

gipsy steps back slowly. “what are you--” devasena’s cut off by an explosion. they get hit with a wave a second after and stumble, struggling to stay upright. striker’s arm flies past gipsy’s head. devasena watches it go wide-eyed. "no," she says, quietly, then again, " _no_."

everything’s eerily quiet, after. baahu can’t hear anything but his own breathing, loud and unsteady. devasena watches the ocean around them unseeing. “LOCCENT?” she says finally, voice trembling.

“they're gone,” tendo says, grimly.

devasena takes a deep breath. “how many kaiju are left?”

“none.”

“devasena?” baahu asks watching as devasena’s hands clench into fists and then relax again.

she lets out a shaky breath and looks down at their feet. “we have to finish it,” she says. baahu follows her gaze to the core of their jaeger which is...nuclear. she turns to him, raising an eyebrow.

he swallows then nods shortly. “we’re going into the breach.”

**Author's Note:**

> * chapter two coming soon(-ish).  
> 
> * find me on tumblr, either at [my main](http://mayabazaar.tumblr.com) or at [my bookblr.](http:spookyghafas.tumblr.com)  
> 
>   
> 
> * title from "immigrant song" by led zeppelin


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